localization

My friend Ruth M Sylte has been doing a great series on how to internationalize your email signature and other contact information basics, and it reminded me of a funny communication breakdown that I once caused.

A tip for those with Asian audiences

First, a quick backgrounder:

Asian family names come first and given names follow. However, many Asians adapt their names for a Western audience, and Western readers who don’t recognize any of the pieces (e.g. don’t know that Park is a common family name) can’t be sure whether the name they’re seeing is in traditional order or has been adapted. And Westerners can confuse their Asian colleagues when they attempt to be helpful by putting their family name first.

Here’s the solution many global-savvy Asians and their observant Western colleagues have adopted: put the family name in upper-case, e.g.

PARK WonJin

Erin VANG

UCHIDA Noriko

Ruth Marie SYLTE

A comment about (Mr), (Ms), etc.

Ruth advises including a title in front of your name, modestly enclosed in parentheses, e.g. “(Ms) Ruth M Sylte.” This a common tactic for disambiguating gender.

For years I included (Ms) before my name for exactly the reasons Ruth anticipates: because I was tired of getting email to “Mr Erin” and “Mr Vang” from people who really had no way to know better.

However, this led to some amusing conversations with Americans who had known me so long that it didn’t occur to them that my given name “Erin” is not particularly common and is sometimes mistaken as a male name (and who also didn’t perhaps realize that women in high tech management positions are still enough of a minority to promote doubt among those who do know the name).

For example, this one:

Story time

Grant (gentleman who had been working with me for years, near the end of a meeting in my office): I noticed you put “Ms” in your email signature.

me: Yes.

Grant: What does that mean?

me: You know–Ms as opposed to Mr.

Grant: Oh. (Uncomfortably long pause.) You’re not saying Ms as opposed to Miss or Mrs.?

me: No, I’m just clarifying gender because I’m tired of being addressed as “Mr” by people who haven’t met me. (And people standing right in front of me, for that matter–yes, a woman can have short hair and be taller than you–but I didn’t bring that up.)

Grant: So you’re not clarifying marital status.

me: No.

Grant: Oh. (uncomfortable chuckle)

Grant says a few pleasantries and exits the office. My office-mate watches him leave, waits a safe moment, and then bursts into gales of laughter.

I raise an eyebrow, and John explains. He has realized what I have not: that while I thought I was explaining that my name is gender-ambiguous to colleagues around the world, Grant was trying to determine whether he could ask me out.

As it happens, I was single at the time as well as female. But there was another question that this perfectly lovely gentlemen neglected to consider, that it never occurred to me he might have even wondered about, and right there, we did it. Two American native speakers of English sitting a few feet away from each other in Chicago, Illinois, USA and observing each other’s body language and everything, still managed to have a total communication breakdown.

I don’t think there’s an email signature solution to that problem, though.

Developing Software for the World – Internationalization, Localization and Beyond

This event is by invitation only and limited to 50 participants. Register online and join us on Monday, October 10th at 2:30pm in Santa Clara, CA for an expert presentation and panel discuss on leading globalized software development.

What: Leading Globalized Software Development Presentation and Expert Panel Discussion

This event is by invitation only and limited to 50 participants. Register online and join us on Monday, October 10th at 2:30pm in Santa Clara, CA for an expert presentation and panel discuss on leading globalized software development.

Customers & friends of Lingoport and Acrolinx are cordially invited to join us for a special event on the eve of Localization World in Santa Clara on Monday, October 10th at 2:30pm. Join us at TechMart for an interactive presentation and expert panel discuss on how to lead globalized software development at your company.

How to justify and gaining approval for software globalization (i18n and L10n) from management

Measuring ROI on your globalization projects

Agile software development best practices, and much more

The event is open to Lingoport customers & friends and registration is requested. The event targets customer-side internationalization, localization, and globalization managers, software developers and engineers, content developers and technical writer, and anyone interested in understanding and promoting the software globalization process and the effects i18n and L10n have on an organization as a whole.

Agenda

2:30-3:00pm: Introductions and networking.

Coffee and cookies will be provided.

3:00-3:50pm: Presentation and Case Studies: Leading Globalized Development in Your Company

Tex Texin, Chief Globalization Architect at Rearden Commerce and Adam Asnes, Founder & CEO of Lingoport, will discuss how to lead globalized development within a company. Tex and Adam will also showcase real-life case studies and many best practices.

3:50-4:10pm: Break

4:10-5:00pm: Expert panel discuss – To Globalize, or Not. That is the Questions!

We’ll continue the afternoon with an expert panel discussion featuring some of the most experienced industry experts from Rearden Commerce, Acrolinx, Intel, Lingoport and Cisco. Developing software for the world has unique challenges and can add tremendous growth and value to a company’s bottom line. In today’s fast-paced and economically challenging business environment, software companies have very little room to make costly mistakes or to miss out on global opportunities. The goal of the panel discussion is to stimulate debate on a variety of software development, globalization, internationalization and localization related issues. Panel members will discuss real-world best practices and answer and discuss questions from the audience.

5:00-6:00pm: Open Bar – Networking and Discussion

We’ll conclude the afternoon with a networking session and drinks sponsored by Acrolinx and Lingoport. Many of us will then probably head over to the LocWorld opening reception dinner.

Round Table Facilitator

Erin Vang

Erin Vang, PMP, is Principal Pragmatist with Global Pragmatica LLC®, which offers facilitative leadership for technical audiences. She has over twenty years of experience in statistical software documentation, quality assurance, project management, and localization, most recently as International Program Manager for the JMP Research and Development at SAS, and previously with Abacus Concepts and SYSTAT. Vang holds degrees in music performance and math, is a PMI-certified Project Management Professional, and has extensive training in facilitative leadership and conflict resolution. She writes a regular column for Multilingual magazine and is in much demand as a speaker, event moderator, and facilitator.

Panelists

Tex Texin

Chief Globalization Architect at Rearden Commerce

Tex Texin, chief globalization architect at Rearden Commerce, has been providing globalization services including architecture, strategy, training and implementation to the software industry for many years. Tex has created numerous globalize products, managed internationalization development teams, developed internationalization and localization tools, and guided companies in taking business to new regional markets. Tex is also an advocate for internationalization standards in software and on the web. He is a representative to the Unicode Consortium and the World Wide Web Consortium.

Andrew Bredenkamp

CEO at Acrolinx

Andrew Bredenkamp is cofounder and CEO of Acrolinx. Andrew has over 20 years’ experience in multilingual information development. Before starting Acrolinx, Andrew was head of the Technology Transfer Centre at the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence language technology lab. Andrew holds degrees in technical translation and linguistics and a Ph.D. in computational linguistics. He is on the advisory board of a number of organizations, including Translators without Borders and The Centre for Next Generation Localisation.

Loïc Dufresne de Virel

Localization Strategist at Intel Corporation

Loïc Dufresne de Virel is currently a localization strategist within Intel’s in-house localization team. In this role, his main activities include overseeing the use of Intel’s translation management system and deployment of other localization tools, constantly advocating for proper and improved internationalization and localization practices and processes for web, software and “print” collateral, as well as defining the training roadmap for localization and internationalization. Prior to moving to Oregon and joining Intel, where he has been involved in localization for the past 12 years, Loïc spent a few years in Costa Rica, working as a regional technical adviser for the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Richard Faubert

Manager, Software Development QA at Cisco

Richard Faubert has over 20 years of experience in telecommunications technical support for ROLM/IBM/Siemens. Richard joined Cisco Systems in 2000 and has worked in a number of capacities, including Software Development Manager and Program Manager. He is currently the QA Manager of Cisco’s TelePresence. Richard is an alumni of Washington State University.

Adam Asnes

President & CEO of Lingoport

Adam Asnes founded Lingoport in 2001 after seeing firsthand that the niche for software globalization engineering products and services was underserved in the localization industry. Lingoport helps globally focused technology companies adapt their software for worldwide markets with expert internationalization and localization consulting and Globalyzer software. Globalyzer, a market leading software internationalization tool, helps entire enterprises and development teams to effectively internationalize existing and newly developed source code and to prepare their applications for localization.

This event is by invitation only and limited to 50 participants. Register online and join us on Monday, October 10th at 2:30pm in Santa Clara, CA for an expert presentation and panel discuss on leading globalized software development.

A recording of the webinar panel discussion I moderated yesterday is now available here.

Bridging the gap between software development and localization

If you’re involved in software development, localization, internationalization, or globalization, you should watch this for a great introduction to the issues particularly with regard to stakeholder awareness, education, commitment, and communication—it was a lively panel with more than a few “hot button” topics getting lively debate, featuring a number of industry experts:

Free sample of Erin Vang’s work as a moderator

If you’re in charge of setting up panel discussions or conferences for your company and you’re wondering whether engaging a professional facilitator as your moderator for the event is worthwhile, you might want to watch this as a free sample—see how I work to make the conversation more valuable for the audience members and panel participants. I work as an audience advocate to ensure that the event delivers the content that was promised, that it’s lively and interesting, and that we get past the buzzwords, spin, and hot air right away—we get right into the content.

Erin Vang moderates panel discussion on software l10n

So, you’ve developed a new software application, and have high aspirations in terms of selling your application to a global audience. Now what? Problems often arise between developers, localization managers, and business managers due to perceived lack of support, time, and money.

This lack of understanding can lead to great frustration within the development tiers. Join us for an hour long online panel discussion and learn how some of the best known industry thought leaders are contributing to bridging the gap between software development and localization.

The panel features the following industry thought leaders and experts from the software development, content development, internationalization, and localization industries:

Erin Vang, Owner of GlobalPragmatica will be facilitating the online panel discussion. Erin has over twenty years of expe­ri­ence in sta­tis­ti­cal soft­ware doc­u­men­ta­tion, qual­ity assur­ance, project man­age­ment, and local­iza­tion, most recently as Inter­na­tional Pro­gram Man­ager for the JMP Research and Devel­op­ment at SAS, and pre­vi­ously with Aba­cus Con­cepts and SYSTAT. She is currently designing a localization program for Dolby Laboratories.

This presentation is intended for technical managers, software engineers, test engineering managers, QA managers, internationalization and localization managers, technical writers, content developers, and anyone wanting to learn more on how to optimize their global software releases.

We’d love to hear from you. Please send any questions or topics you’d like to have discussed during this panel to Chris Raulf @ chris (at) lingoport.com.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve been asked to facilitate several upcoming roundtable events:

Virtual Roundtable: Shrinking the triangle; Is it possible to achieve good, quick, and cheap in localization? on the web on 20 January 2011

From Chris Raulf:

I recently posted the following question on LinkedIn: How do you achieve good, quick, and cheap in localization?

Having worked in the industry for the last decade (on the customer-side as well as on the vendor-side in production, sales, and marketing), it seems that one has to pick and choose two out of the three: Good, quick, and cheap. My intention by posting this question on LinkedIn was to get the opinions and insights of a wide variety of fellow industry professionals (customer and vendor-side) and, oh boy, it seems like everyone has a strong opinion on this topic.

Well, the LinkedIn discussion is still going on but I’d like to take this discussion to a different level and actually have industry experts talk about it in a virtual Roundtable.

I’m currently working on assembling a panel group of opinionated and expert industry players from the translation-side, localization vendor-side, internationalization-side, content development-side, tools and technology-side, as well as from the customer-side.

So far I’m happy to present the following panelists:

Roundtable facilitator: Erin Vang, Owner of GlobalPragmatica

Renato Beninatto, President of the European Language Industry Association (ELIA)

The goal of this virtual Roundtable is to stimulate debate, learn about our challenges, discuss potential solutions, etc. and see if we can come away with new ideas that will help us cope with the “Fast, Cheap, and Good Quality” triangle.

Localization Technology Roundtable in Palo Alto on 3 February 2011

The best conversations happen when the right people get together

The Localization Technology Round Table brings together 5 industry leaders to present an open technology framework that speeds up time to market and drastically reduces your localization costs.

Together, Lingoport, Acrolinx, Clay Tablet, Milengo and Asia Online will show how advanced, modular localization technology addresses the challenges faced when launching products or services to international markets in multiple languages.